COLUMBUS, Ohio – When you plant a seed, the roots grow down, and the plant grows up. But how does that happen in space where there is no gravity? That’s just one of many questions The Ohio State University will be trying to answer as part of a NASA-funded multimillion-dollar effort to develop new, commercially based, human-occupied space stations.

The International Space Station (ISS) has been in low-earth orbit for more than 20 years, said Dr. John Horack, OSU senior associate dean of the College of Engineering and a 30-year veteran of the spaceflight industry. However, NASA plans on replacing the ISS with a series of commercial, privately-owned space stations. In December, NASA awarded agreements to three separate companies to build commercial private space stations in low earth orbit.

“Ohio State University is the leading university on one of the three called Starlab to help execute commercial and other research that will be carried on onboard,” Horack said. “Our role is to continually support the university research that will take place onboard Starlab and at OSU.”

OSU will be assisting Starlab by helping the program build and operate terrestrial analog facilities, that is, the ground-based “control lab” for agriculture and other research going on aboard Starlab, Horack said. When scientists do research in space, it is essential that an identical experiment is happening on the ground so they can understand the space component.

“Then you know if the changes you see in a plant experiment, like growing leafy green vegetables, and trying to use space flight to improve the iron content,” Horack said. “I want a plant growing on the ground and in space so that I can see and measure the difference. Terrestrial analog facilities are a copy of your research environment in space, on the ground.”

The third piece of the operation has to do with the commercialization of the research as a commercial value to build new companies. OSU will also be helping with that aspect, Horack said.

“Because of the tremendous amount of ag research that is expected to go on onboard Starlab and on the ground, they reached out to OSU because of our expertise in engineering as well as in ag,” Horack said.

It is important to understand the difference between growing plants on the ground and in space, said Dr. Scott Shearer, professor and chair of the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, who is leading the team for this project.

“The difference in the environment is that in space, it’s microgravity,” Shearer said. “On the ground, the plants sense gravity; they send the roots down and the cotyledons up, if you think about a seed germinating and growing. But they don’t have that (gravity) to respond to, so plants grow differently in space.”

Also, when you’re in space, you have to take the environment with you. Shearer said that the researchers are concerned about how water and nutrients cycle through plants. They won’t have the option to add more topsoil or use water and oxygen only once. It will need to be recycled.  

“All of this allows us to get a much better handle on plant growth and to be able to apply this to our systems here on earth,” Shearer said. “The other thing I would think it could lead to is learning about the effect of what they call ionizing radiation on plant and animal cells. There’s been some suggestion that we may end up with new plant breeds or new plant genetics because of ionizing radiation. We’re going to get a lot better at what we do in growing plants because of that environment in space.”

The research will largely revolve around how seeds germinate, Horack said. That requires a lot of investigation into where the root goes, how much energy goes into the root system, and what needs to go to the stalk that here on earth goes on above ground.

“This is an opportunity for us to get into the details of how plants grow,” Horack said. “We’re not going to be able to have 100 acres of corn; it is not a food production facility per se, although astronauts might grow some leafy green things to make a salad, but will be much more focused on what we can learn.”

This Ohio State research and innovation will support the Starlab commercial space station. Starlab is led by Nanoracks, a space company dedicated to providing commercial access to space.

Nanoracks has been awarded a $160 million Space Act Agreement by NASA to design and deploy the Starlab commercial space station, which will host the space-based George Washington Carver Science Park as part of the agency’s Commercial Low-Earth orbit Development program.